


twist and then collide

by thenewgothicromance



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Antwerp shenanigans y'all, Drug Use, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, and beyond, not a tag yet but it should be, snorting coke off each other, thats a given with theo right, this started as smut but somehow got a lot of feelings along the way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 02:07:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21569785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewgothicromance/pseuds/thenewgothicromance
Summary: He keeps thinking about it when he gets back to New York. Every time Kitsey tries to talk to him through increasingly strained smiles he thinks about it and his ears start burning, and he has to look away.While Kitsey goes home and breaks the news to her mother, which Theo tries not to think about, he goes home and thinks about Boris instead. He tries not to think about Boris either, but those fragments, orange and blue, won’t leave him.He takes pills for two, three, four days in a row, for the black and dreamless sleep they bring him.And yet, he’s still he thinking about it three weeks later, when Boris shows up at the shop again.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 39
Kudos: 486





	twist and then collide

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Столкновение галактик](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26155789) by [maricon_lanero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maricon_lanero/pseuds/maricon_lanero)



> So this really spiraled out of control but here it is. Forgive my attempts at Russian and Polish, I've linked what I believe the translations are to each phrase - some of them sound a little funny in English, but I think they should be right for the language.
> 
> For the full experience with this, maybe go give "my blue heaven" by taking back sunday a listen

Boris has more than heroin in his Antwerp apartment, of course. 

The night before Theo leaves they are sprawled across the couch in front of another old movie, like a hundred other nights they’ve spent together. It’s _Holiday Inn_ , but they’re not paying attention, not watching it so much as they’re floating on the sound in the otherwise silence, otherwise darkness. Theo almost doesn’t notice when Boris mutes it, thinking there is simply a pause in the dialogue, a pause that goes on longer and longer until finally Theo turns to Boris, and sees him holding up a little bag of white powder. He remembers Boris standing much the same way in his dad’s kitchen, holding up a bag of Xandra’s pills.

“You want?” Boris says, shaking the bag, as if he’s said it once already, and Theo nods. 

The glass coffee table is covered in empty bottles and take-out containers, the needle from Theo’s penicillin injection, spilling-over-full ashtrays. Theo moves to clear a space on it for them to cut the lines, but Boris puts a hand out to stop him. 

He sprinkles some of what’s in the bag into the palm of his hand, and plucks a razor blade from the mess on the table, cutting a line on his palm with the flat edge. He holds the hand out to Theo and nods. 

Theo leans over his hand, Boris’ palm radiating heat onto Theo’s face, and does it quickly, sitting back and wiping at his nose. 

“Your turn,” Boris says, and Theo holds out his hand. 

The cuff of his shirtsleeve is buttoned, and Boris undoes it, rolling the sleeve up. Which seems unnecessary to Theo, but he doesn’t complain. Theo waits, again, hand outstretched, but Boris instead goes to his other wrist, and undoes that cuff as well. 

“What are you doing?” Theo says.

“Trying something else.”

Then his hands move to the bottom of Theo’s shirt, untucked as it is from his pants, and begin to undo those buttons too. 

  
  


“What the fuck Boris,” Theo says, but he still doesn’t move. He still keeps stupidly holding his hand out, as if it has anything in it, as if Boris seems to have any intention of filling it. 

Once the bottom four or five buttons are undone, Boris pushes the shirt aside. He’s left just the top few buttons around Theo’s neck, and when he looks up, he laughs.

“Hah! You look like cholo,” he says, tapping his own collar, and Theo says again, “What the fuck, Boris?” and kicks at him, scrambling to sit up against the couch, fumbling with his shirt buttons.

He means to do the shirt up again but instead he finds himself undoing the remaining buttons and pulling it off his shoulders, over his head. He knocks his glasses askew, and when he straightens them, Boris has stopped smiling, watching him with his eyes dark. Theo can’t read anything in them. Maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he doesn’t want to know what Boris is going to do next, maybe he doesn’t want to know the next move to be able to stop it, or not. To have to choose.

Boris gets to his knees, on the floor.

“Lay back,” he says, jerking his chin towards the back of the couch. Theo lets himself slide down the cushion without thinking. 

Boris pours the powder onto Theo’s stomach. He uses the flat edge of the razor blade to cut it. 

If they were in a movie, there would be lights in different colors, painting them blue, purple, yellow, red. There would be music. There would be people shouting, people laughing, and the camera would do circles around and around them. 

But it is not a movie, and they have only the white light of the television screen and the deafening shudder of Theo’s every breath, as Boris’ cold fingers and cold razor blade make trails on his skin. 

Boris dips his head down - the line is just below Theo’s navel - and frames Theo’s hips with his elbows. 

“Boris,” Theo says, and it sounds so raw he wishes he could pull it back into his mouth. Boris glances up at him and smiles, giving Theo a flash of those bright white teeth. As he dips down again, he has one hand up by his face, on his nose, but the other is resting along Theo’s side, curving lightly around his ribcage. 

“Hold still, Potter,” Boris mutters, and it’s only then that Theo realizes he is shaking, the muscles in his stomach twitching under Boris’ careful, light exhales. Theo wills his lungs and his muscles to still, tries to will his heart to still with them. Boris waits for him to settle, face all but pressed to Theo’s stomach, and all Theo can hear in his head is Boris last night, telling him, “On my deathbed I will crave it.”

Boris does the line in one quick inhale. 

Theo is familiar enough with the feeling to recognize the drugs kicking in, and after that, he doesn’t remember much. It’s just like old times.

At some point he closes his eyes, and when he opens them again Boris has moved, is leaning over him, with his eyes still dark, his pupils wide. 

He puts his hands on Theo, and Theo thinks again, “On my deathbed I will crave it.” Then he thinks, he would do anything Boris asked him to do. He can’t say that, but the strangled sound that comes out of his throat must be clear enough. 

After that, Theo remembers Boris on top of him, hot breath and teeth on his skin. Boris standing over him, thumb on his own waistband, fingers on the zipper. He remembers sliding to the floor between Boris’ legs. And then. 

Well, then he remembers Boris fucking his mouth. Spit dripping down his chin and Boris’ fingers in his hair, each thrust of Boris’ hips almost aborted, like he was trying to stay still but couldn’t stop himself. His dick in Theo’s throat until Theo gagged on it. When he pulled away Theo didn’t gasp for air, just laid back on the floor, shaking, face burning, dick hard in his pants.

So maybe he remembers a lot, but he remembers it like a dream, in fragments. Boris picking him up off the floor, pushing him to the bedroom. Boris’ hand prodding the bumps of his spine. Boris’ face orange and blue in the light from the window, blue circles under his eyes. Falling to his elbows on the bed, and Boris over him, all around him, the smell of his cologne heavy and his breath on Theo’s neck. Boris’ voice in his ear saying, “[“Ya sobirayus’ tebya trakhnut'.”](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ru&tl=en&text=Ya%20sobirayus%E2%80%99%20yebat%E2%80%99sya%20tebya.)” 

One of the words is familiar, one Boris taught him years ago, but he can’t remember right now what it means. He doesn’t need to. Boris is spreading Theo’s knees apart, Boris is making Theo’s stomach clench, Boris is making his eyes roll back into his head. 

He remembers enough.

\--

He keeps thinking about it when he gets back to New York. Every time Kitsey tries to talk to him through increasingly strained smiles he thinks about it and his ears start burning, and he has to look away. It’s not that he feels guilty, exactly. She made it clear, very clear, how she felt about their relationship.

_“I didn’t think it would matter until the wedding...I don’t expect you to understand what it’s like to be in love with the wrong person.”_

Theo almost wants to laugh. And besides all that, after a few days of stilted conversations - Theo refusing to discuss where he’d been for over a week without contact, Kitsey angry and not in the mood to apologize for anything, not that Theo can really ask her to now - they break off the engagement. While Kitsey goes home and breaks the news to her mother, which Theo tries not to think about, he goes home and thinks about Boris instead. He tries not to think about Boris either, but those fragments, orange and blue, won’t leave him. 

He takes pills for two, three, four days in a row, for the black and dreamless sleep they bring him. 

And yet, he’s still he thinking about it three weeks later, when Boris shows up at the shop again. 

The bell above the shop door jingles while Theo’s with a customer, guiding old Mrs. Woodruff’s hand along the underside of a table. When he turns around to greet the new customer, it’s him. 

Boris, pointedly not looking at him, peering at something in the jewelry case up front, idly picking at his fingernails. Boris wearing a dark shirt and a leather jacket a little too bulky in the shoulders for him, for the leanness of him. Theo tries to swallow and breathe at the same time and ends up choking, coughing too hard.

Mrs. Woodruff pats his shoulder, saying, “Dear, are you alright?” But still Boris doesn’t look over. From the curve of his cheek, it looks like he might be smiling. 

Theo takes as long as he can chatting with the old woman, way past when he would normally be trying to usher her out of the store. But eventually she leaves, insisting, “I won’t take up any more of your time, it looks like you’ve got another customer waiting.”

After she leaves, Theo doesn’t move. He stands, hidden in part by a shelf of wooden clocks, until Boris finally turns to him and says, “Potter.” He’s smiling.

“Boris,” Theo says, looking down and pretending to straighten something on the shelf in front of him. And after a moment, “What are you doing back in New York?”

“I like New York,” Boris shrugs. “I always have business to take care of in New York.” 

When Theo doesn’t respond, Boris says, “I thought we could go to dinner.” It makes Theo want to scream, but of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t even say, _Well I don’t know, I’m pretty busy._ He doesn’t even say no.

He says, “Yeah, okay,” and Boris smiles again. 

“Good. I’ll pick you up here, at seven. Yes?”

Theo nods, mute. 

He spends the next four hours in the shop just agonizing over it, over whether or not he should just text Boris and cancel it, say, “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

But he does know what he’s thinking, and it’s of Boris’ blue, sleeping face, the way the morning light softened the sharp squareness of him and cast shadows of his eyelashes on his cheeks when Theo awoke in the morning, sneaking out of the apartment to catch a cab to the airport. 

When Boris returns, at 7:01, Theo hasn’t really moved. Hasn’t changed his clothes - why would he, he asked himself. Boris, hasn’t either, and is, Theo notices, wearing the same leather boots he had in Amsterdam, not having replaced them for his old combat boots after all.

“Ready to go?” he says, and Theo busies himself with closing up the cash register until he can’t anymore, and follows Boris out to the street. There’s no car waiting, so he follows Boris up the sidewalk. 

Boris takes him to a bar not very different from the one they’d last met in. They sit in another dark corner booth, and eat sausage and potatoes, and Theo forgot how much Boris likes his routines. 

“How have you been?” Boris says with his mouth full.

“I’m fine,” Theo hedges, as if that could ever possibly be enough for Boris. As if Boris asked him to dinner to hear, _I’m fine._ Not that Theo understands exactly why Boris _did_ asked him to dinner.

“Apologize to your party guests?” Boris says lightly, taking a drink.

“Not in so many words.” 

Boris laughs.

“And your fiance?”

Theo tries not to grimace.

“Ex-fiance.”

“Ah, I see.” Boris can’t hide that he is pleased he by this. He tries to smother a smile in his glass, but Theo still sees. 

“You don’t have to look so happy about it,” Theo says, but he’s finding it hard to summon any real anger about it, and it comes out with very little bite.

“My apologies,” Boris shrugs. “But you told me yourself, you weren’t happy.” 

Theo stares at the table, at his hand poised over his butter knife. 

“I’m not happy now, either,” he says. He doesn’t even know why he says it. Boris is always catching him off-guard that way.

The half-smile falls from Boris’ face, but he doesn’t let it show in voice.

“I meant what I said before. You should come work for me.”

“Nothing risky,” he adds quickly, when Theo’s face pales. “Not on the field, you might say, but there are many things to be done, many details to look after, and you, you are good with the smallest of things.”

“Isn’t that what you have Myriam for?” Theo says, which is a stupid thing to say, because it’s not as if _that’s_ the thing holding him back. 

“Myriam is very talented,” Boris shrugs. “Whatever job I give her, she will do it.”

“Well, the shop,” Theo starts to say, but Boris ignores him. 

“You don’t have say yes now, let us eat and have a good evening, yes?”

They sit in silence while Theo pushes potatoes around on his plate, not-eating and nearly vibrating out of his skin. How is he supposed to talk to Boris like this? Like nothing happened? How did he do it back when they were younger? Every morning he would wake up and act normal, he would _feel_ normal, as if Boris didn’t know everything about him, hadn’t seen every piece of him taken apart and put together again. Or as if he had, and it just didn’t matter.

He can’t look at Boris now without thinking about it, without feeling the knot of dread in his stomach worrying about when, if, Boris will bring it up. He can’t keep waiting for it and pretending not to. 

“This isn’t like when we were kids,” he says finally. “I can’t just forget everything.” 

Boris actually stops eating. He holds his fork poised above his plate and narrows his eyes.

“Forget? What are you trying to forget?”   
  


“Boris, come on.”

“No really, you are always trying to forget things,” Boris says, shaking his head and waving a finger at Theo. “All those years you never even look at painting, as if you will forget it is there.”

“Yeah, just like all those years you never called, as if you forgot.” Theo hates himself as soon as he says it, hates how it makes him sound like a jealous girlfriend. What the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway? 

All those years ago - what if it hadn’t meant everything Theo had thought? Not that he had thought it _meant_ something, at the time he always thought it was Boris who was confused about that, if it was either of them, in fact he’d been sure of it. It was just fun, just temporary. But Boris--Boris had _kissed_ him, in front of that taxi driver. _Boris_ had kissed _him_ , not because he was drunk, not as a substitute for some girl, but because he was going to miss Theo. That was real, wasn’t it? And in Antwerp, well. He doesn’t know what that meant.

He wants it again, he knows that. It doesn’t make sense, even as he thinks about it every day, it doesn’t make sense to him. 

Boris’ fingers, in his hair. Boris hands at the back of his neck, cradling his head. Holding it still. 

Boris lining up the coke on his stomach. Boris breathing him in with it. Boris’ hands on him. 

But even though he thinks about it all the time, he doesn’t know that it _means_ anything, or if he even wants it to. 

“Forgot you? What do you mean forgot you! Potter, listen, I told you it was a very fucked up time, _I_ was very fucked up at that time. And I had the painting, and you, you were in New York, not knowing, and I didn’t know what to do. You left so quick, and after, after I didn't know how to fix it, sure you had discovered the painting was switched and hated me. But I have told you this. Forgot you? How can you say, I _forgot_ you? My whole life since you left has been about you and I--”

The bar seems to have gone quiet around them. Boris’ voice has risen almost to a shout, and his hands are balled in fists on the table. He glances around the room and runs a hand through his hair, sighing. 

“What I am saying is only that, _you_ were always trying to forget things. Even as kids, you were always blacking out, always forgetting. What do you need to forget?”

“Boris. Come on,” Theo says again, but it sounds weak even to his own ears this time. Boris barrels on.

“Every thing - many bad, but many good too - has brought me here. I can’t change it, so why pretend? Life is what it is. You try to fight it too much.”

Theo puts his head in his hand. He shouldn’t have said anything. He should never have brought this up - how he thought he could talk around this without really saying anything, with _Boris_ of all people, he isn’t sure, he should have kept his mouth shut. 

“Forget I said anything,” he says, and then groans out loud when he realizes what he’s said.

“Forget! Forget! Again with the forgetting!” Boris shouts, gesturing wildly. “Potter, I haven’t forgotten anything.” 

Theo doesn’t want to have this conversation, he just wants Boris to stop, to be quiet, to stop making a scene.

“Okay, okay, I--” he starts to say, not even knowing how he’s going to finish, but Boris leans over the table and kisses him. 

It’s just like when they were kids. Boris is gripping Theo’s face tightly in his hands. 

Boris’ fingers press in at the back of his neck, and suddenly Theo isn’t thinking about being a kid anymore he’s thinking, again, about being on the floor in Boris’ apartment, between Boris’ legs. He jerks his head back. 

For a moment Boris stays as he was, his face tilted and his eyes closed, his forehead smooth, lips just parted. He looks ridiculous and it makes Theo’s heart ache. But he can feel eyes burning into his back and it makes his heart lurch into his throat.

“What the mother fuck, Boris,” he hisses and Boris frowns, his forehead creasing before he opens his eyes. He looks sad, maybe, or disappointed. The same way he looked when Theo left him in Vegas. Theo hates that fucking look, that look like Boris doesn’t _get_ it, doesn’t get why he can’t just _do_ that, in front of other people.

Theo bolts.

He scrambles out of the booth and past all the people staring at them and out the door, onto the street outside. He walks half a block up before he stops, turning in circles on the pavement.

Everything is so cold, so sharp. The streetlamps are buzzing and blinding him, bright orange (blue and orange, on Boris’ skin, glowing on the curve of his shoulder, off his fingers as they tangle in Theo’s, pressing him down onto the bed). Theo turns out his pants and jacket pockets, wishing he had something on him to take, to take the edge off. 

“Theo,” Boris calls to him, jogging up the street. Boris hardly ever used his name like that when they were younger.

“I’m sorry,” Boris says, breathing heavily, “I did not mean to make you uncomfortable, I just--”

“You can’t do that!” Theo says, not looking at him, rubbing his hands over his face. “All those people staring at us, you can’t just--you can’t do that.”

“No one was staring at us.”

“You don’t understand,” Theo insists.

“I understand you are embarrassed. In my flat, is no big deal, in my flat you let me have my way, but here, where some stranger you don’t even know may see, you don’t want me to touch you.”

Have my way _with you_ is what he means, even if he doesn’t say it, Theo knows, he remembers. 

“In the flat,” Boris says, getting closer, and when Theo glances up at him, his eyes are bright. “In the flat you can want. Out here, out here you think you cannot.”

Boris puts his hands on Theo’s shoulders bracing him. 

“I’m sorry,” Theo sighs, and resists the urges both to push Boris away and to make a mirror image of him, to put his hands on Boris’ shoulders, to brace him too.

“Is okay, Potter,” Boris murmurs, just holding on, holding his Theo steady. 

He does want. Boris is right, of course Boris is right. 

“I can’t do this here.” 

“So come with me, to my hotel,” Boris says.

Boris makes everything seem so easy. Makes it seem silly to do anything else. Why wouldn’t Theo go to his hotel? What possible reason would Theo have for not going to his hotel? Boris asked him to go and he _wants_ to go and they can be away from this street, away from anyone who might get the wrong idea about them.

“Okay,” he says, and Boris smiles. It’s hard not to smile with him. 

\--

Boris isn’t staying far from the shop. That could mean something, but it could also be a coincidence. Theo doesn’t ask. He just follows Boris through the lobby of the hotel.

It’s different than before, in Antwerp. When they had gone to Boris’ apartment, he had promised a party, promised girls - and it wasn’t that Theo had wanted those things, but it had given them an excuse. Now there’s no excuse. They don’t speak in the elevator. Well, Theo, doesn’t speak. Boris is telling some nonsense story about checking into the hotel, and Theo is trying to listen but can’t hear him over his own heartbeat.

The room is dark, lit up by the tv silently playing the hotel ad channel. Boris doesn’t make any move to turn the lights on, and it’s almost as if they never left Antwerp at all. 

It’s that, the sameness of it, that gives Theo the guts to get to his knees in front of Boris, standing at the foot of the bed. 

Boris raises his eyebrows, but threads his fingers through Theo’s hair - gentle, stroking fingers. Theo presses his face into Boris’ stomach. He tries to remember if they kissed in Antwerp. He wonders how many things they’ve done that he doesn’t remember. Did they kiss before, as kids - before the taxi, before he was leaving?

Theo sits back on his heels.

Boris undoes his belt, and the few buttons on his shirt that had been done to begin with. His skin shines pale blue-white in the darkness.

“I want you to--” Theo says, but he can’t finish. He can’t say it. He can’t explain how he needs Boris to do it like this, to make the movements for him, to take it from him. Even if he could say it, he’s not sure he should, not sure Boris would still want him if he did. 

_Boris wants him_. 

It’s almost too much to think about. He’s never _had_ to think about it before, it’s always been a side effect before, an accident, a convenience. But they’re here now because Theo followed Boris here, knowing what was waiting on the other side of the door. That’s as many choices as he can stand making for one night.

He can’t say any of that, so instead he puts his hand over Boris’ on the back of his head, and uses it to push himself forward. 

Boris fills his mouth. 

“Potter,” Boris hisses, his fingers digging into Theo’s scalp. 

Bori’s belt clinks against Theo’s chin. Theo tugs on his pants until they drop down to his ankles. Boris groans and pushes deeper into Theo’s throat. Theo closes his eyes and lets himself go. He lets himself float, and forget who he is, where he is. Boris is right; Theo is always trying to forget, and here he can, for a moment. 

Boris moves one of his hands from Theo’s head to brace himself against the bed, pushing in harder until Theo gags. Tears fill Theo’s eyes as his throat spasms and he can think of nothing else but this, nothing else but Boris, right now. Of nothing but the wet sounds of Boris fucking his throat that fill the room until Boris beings talking. Once he begins it’s like a floodgate opening. It’s nonsense, mostly, much of it not even in English.

“Oh Theo, you’re so--you--[ty tak khorosho vyglyadish' stoya na kolenyakh](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ru&tl=en&text=ty%20tak%20khorosho%20vyglyadish'%20stoya%20na%20kolenyakh), Theo, so good, [tak horosho...Bozhe moy, ty prekrasen, ne ostanavlyvaysya](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ru&tl=en&text=tak%20horosho...Moy%20bog%2C%20ty%20prekrasen%2C%20ne%20ostanavlyvaysya)...Theo, I...so good, you’re so good.”

He seems to forget how to say anything else after that, stroking behind Theo’s ear with his thumb, still thrusting into his throat, muttering, “So good, you’re so good,” faster and faster.

“[Dochodzę](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=pl&tl=en&text=Dochodz%C4%99)," he says, "Ya [konchayu.](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ru&tl=en&text=ya%20konchayu)” His whole body tenses, and he shoots down Theo’s throat.

Theo chokes and pulls away, spitting down the front of his shirt. Boris sinks to his knees and holds Theo’s face in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Boris says, but Theo shakes his head. Boris wipes a long string of spit hanging from Theo’s chin and kisses him. 

Kissing Boris - he’s never done it this sober. And come to think of it, he’s not sure he’s ever kissed Boris back at all. He does now. 

It’s different than kissing Kitsey, or any of his girlfriends. Not because Boris’ lips feel any different - the kiss is soft and wet and sticky, like any kiss - but it makes _him_ feel different. Nervous, almost, but not the sick nervousness he’s used to. It makes his mind go to a blank, bright nothing, and pulls at his stomach. Boris pulls him up by his shoulders and pushes him onto the bed.

Theo leans back on his elbows, and Boris stretches out over him. Theo’s throat seizes, and Boris seems to sense it.

“It’s okay to want here,” he says, and Theo takes a deep breath. 

He nods, and lays back.

“I want you,” he says, hoarsely, to the ceiling. He can feel Boris shiver, and looks down at him. Boris’ hair hangs into his face, and Theo can just see his eyes behind it, glinting in the dimness of the room.

Boris pulls at Theo’s belt, and Theo has to lift his hips to help Boris get his pants down to his knees. He lies perfectly still, focusing very hard on the rough texture of the ceiling. Focusing so hard in fact, that he almost doesn’t notice Boris shifting his position down the bed until he takes Theo’s cock in his hand and touches it to his lips. It’s already hard, which makes Theo’s face and chest flush, knowing Boris can see it, can _feel_ it, how much he liked having Boris use him like that. 

He doesn’t get long to feel embarrassed before Boris takes Theo’s cock all the way in his mouth. 

Theo doesn’t pull Boris’ hair, doesn’t move his hips up to meet his mouth - but he does rest his hands on Boris’ bare shoulders, sensitive of the scar just below his left hand.

Theo’s had his dick sucked before, of course. Kitsey had actually been sort of good at it, intentional in her every motion, but perhaps a little too careful, as if always worried about smearing her lipstick, even when she wasn’t wearing any. 

Boris is not careful. 

Like kissing, it feels different anyhow, feels different to Theo. _Boris wants him_ \- it feels wrong to think it, wrong for it to be true, but it also makes his stomach clench, puts him on the edge sooner than he’d like. 

He lets himself float for a while on the tide between feeling good and wanting it to last. Boris runs his tongue flat along the underside of Theo’s cock, and makes Theo break his silence to gasp. He looks down, and Boris isn’t looking at him, focused on the task at hand, lips pink and stretched, his hair falling on Theo’s stomach in a dark tangle. Boris, with whom Theo has shared drinks and scars and beds. Boris, moody and irrepressible. Boris, for whom there is nothing Theo wouldn’t do. 

“[Bogurodzica](http://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=bogurodzica),” Boris says when he pauses for breath, stretching his jaw. Theo doesn’t understand the words, but the roughness of his voice puts Theo over the edge. 

When he’s finished shaking, Boris sits up, wiping his mouth, with a smile. 

“It is good to want, yes?” he says, flopping down with his head next to Theo’s on the pillows. Theo tries to catch his breath.

\--

Later, lying beside Boris on the bed, Boris talking about a recent trip to Norway (remaining vague on the details of what he was doing there), toying with Theo’s fingers, Theo can’t help but compare how very alike, and very unalike, it is to nights spent lying next to Kitsey. 

He doesn’t even know if he _should_ compare the two, but he can’t help but remember nights spent listening to her chatter on - about a friend she’d run into, something Toddy had said - pretending politely to listen, but being somewhere else entirely. He doesn’t exactly listen to Boris either, not fully. Theo’s always been more internal than external, he knows that, lost in his thoughts. But he does give Boris more of an ear - it is harder to tune out when so many of his stories involve, “and then we are being shot at,” or, “and then I said, ‘No officer, I have never seen this man before in my life!’” 

He can’t help comparing the sex, either. With Kitsey it had been -- well, it had been different. He had been out of it most of the time - although until tonight, that had always been true with Boris too - and was something to him that needed to be done, something he had to do, as an animal, as a man. Boris--he wasn't even ready to think about what Boris made him feel like yet, man or animal or something else entirely. The way that, with Kitsey, he was always thinking about something else - there was dust on the lampshade, or she was wearing new earrings, or or or - but with Boris there was nothing but the moment, the feeling of his hands and mouth consuming Theo, swallowing him whole.

“You are quiet, Potter,” Boris says after a moment. “Bored of me already?”

Theo laughs.

“Who could be bored of you?”

Boris smiles but doesn’t laugh. He waits.

“I don’t know what this is supposed to mean,” Theo admits, in barely more than a whisper, avoiding looking at anything in particular. 

_It was just for fun_ . He’d always held that in his head, back when they were young. But it isn’t, and he knows that. And he thinks - he thinks, despite what Boris said before ( _we just needed girls…just happens at that age sometimes_ ) that Boris knows it. He thinks that’s why they’re here, or if not why they’re here, why they end up here, again and again.

“ _Supposed_ to mean, Potter, always worrying about _supposed_ to,” Boris scoffs. “You get to decide what it means, what anything means. This is the best part of life, and you--”

“Boris,” Theo says, and something in his voice makes Boris stop. “I don’t know what--” 

He takes a deep breath, and Boris puts a hand on his cheek, forcing Theo’s face to turn towards him, forcing Theo to look at him. 

“I never told you,” Theo says, his heart beating so wildly that it makes his voice rough and uneven. Boris’ eyes are dark and sparkling, fixed on Theo. Hanging on his words for better or worse. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t. I loved you.”

Theo half expects Boris to say, “I know.” It’s what he’s always assumed, and really why, in eight years, he never tried to find Boris himself. He _must_ already know. How could he not?

But Boris doesn’t say _“I know_.” He doesn’t say anything, but his brow furrows and his lower lip quivers.

“I loved you,” Theo says again, and saying it aloud makes him want to laugh, almost, it seems so simple. “But I don’t know what that means.”

“Theo,” Boris says, and Theo swims in the way it sounds, _Tee-oh_ , in his voice. Boris’ eyes are glossy, and he searches Theo’s face. “You don’t know what it means to love someone?”

Theo shakes his head. 

“I don’t know what it means to love _you_. Does that mean my life, my whole life, is supposed to change?”

Boris shrugs.

“Doesn’t have to. But you said yourself, in your life, you are not happy. What is so bad about change?”

_Me_ , Theo thinks, _I can’t change_ me. If he changes too much from who he was when--from who he was before, he can’t go back. 

But he knows, looking at Boris - and maybe he always has known, maybe it’s why he couldn’t say _I love you_ back then, because he knew, he knew that he had changed already. And at the same time, he hasn’t changed at all. And whatever the change is, he can’t stop it, no more than you can stop your hair from one day turning gray. You can hide it for some time, but not change it, not stop it. No more than you can stop death. 

“On my deathbed, I will crave it,” Theo mutters, and it takes Boris a moment to remember the words, remember having said them. 

“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” Boris says. 

It’s true, what Theo has always suspected. At least, Boris seems to think so. That, try as you might, you can’t change what you want. And what you want so often seems to become who you are.

That pursuit, to Theo, once seemed noble. That one might try to want the right thing, even if you can’t escape your true nature in the end. But with Boris in front of him, watching him with eyes that have seen Theo in most of his worst moments, and so too in some of his best - because they _were_ the best moments, the best Theo has had in a long time, those days they spent in that all-but-empty housing development like two boys at the end of the world. Maybe he can’t escape what he wants, but maybe, maybe it won’t kill him.

“Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu,” Boris says. “Did they teach you that one in your ‘ _Conversational Russian_?’”

Theo shakes his head. Boris closes his eyes, and tightens his grip on Theo’s hand.

“I love you too.”


End file.
